


Coming Home

by therapychicken



Series: Going Viral! [2]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: COVID-19, CW: COVID discussion, Coronavirus, David and Alexis love each other, Domestic Fluff, Family Fluff, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Patrick is a Supportive Husband, Post-Canon, Protective Siblings, Quarantine, Self-Isolation, Sibling Love, a bit more angst than the last one, still mostly fluffy though!!!, wear masks people!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:27:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25553566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therapychicken/pseuds/therapychicken
Summary: "Oh my god, David! I'm just trying to say that maybe I'll come back to Schitt's Creek for the duration? Like, while all the speakeasies are closed here."
Relationships: Alexis Rose & David Rose, Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Series: Going Viral! [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1851727
Comments: 10
Kudos: 116





	Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

> So... I guess this is a series now? (And definitely one where the order is less chronological and more "when I posted it"- I haven't even decided if they're all technically in the same universe or not.)
> 
> This is a bit more outright COVID-y than the last one- I based some elements on my own experiences, and those of my friends, in the New York area in March/April/May- so if that's not your thing, then feel free to give it a skip. But for the most part, it's more about fluff and family and stuff like that. I did a BIT of research in terms of Canadian quarantining law, but I cannot guarantee that everything is correct, and I'm setting the story in mid-April or so, though this whole time period has kind of blended together for me (it's when I was sick myself) so I'm not sure that everything alluded to in this story all actually happened at the same time. 
> 
> But anyway, mostly this is just meant to be fun, so enjoy, let me know what you think in the comments, and most importantly, wear a mask and save lives!

"So I was thinking," Alexis says in a tinny voice over Zoom, "I'm working remotely anyway, and New York is basically a ghost town- nothing is going on, nobody can even see my cute looks, and I'm solidly WFH anyway. In an apartment which, if I were anybody but someone who had just spent the last five years living in a motel room with my brother I would call 'prison-cell chic,' but seeing as I did, in comparison I'd call it more 'on the smaller side.' And I've been stuck there by myself for like three weeks."

David waits, because Alexis has just stopped speaking and now has her head cocked as though she's waiting for something from his end. He has no idea what that might be. "I get the vibe that you may have just completed your thought in your head, but not out loud, and I have absolutely no idea what you want from me now."

Alexis's eyes widen theatrically. "Oh my god, David! I'm just trying to say that maybe I'll come back to Schitt's Creek for the duration? Like, while all the speakeasies are closed here. But I need to quarantine somewhere for two whole weeks, apparently, and of course my brother, and his cute as a button husband, like, live in this sweet little house with an extra guest room-"

"Oh god, why do you even want to come back here? You're in New York! It's, like, where you actually want to be! Why would you want to come back to Schitt's Creek of all places, and also, if you have to stay somewhere in isolation, why don't you just get a room at the motel?"

"Excuse me, but I think I just heard my own brother, who I saved from the Great Waxing Disaster of 2009, tell me that he would have me stay at the motel? Like, ew. And New York without all the people and the stuff and the fashion is kind of just a big bunch of concrete and pollution with no trees-"

David snorts. "Since when have you cared if there were trees?"

"Since always, David! We both know that I'm really an LA girl, anyway, there were always trees there. You're the one who always wanted to be in New York."

"Well, not now, I don't!" The words slip out of him and he immediately realizes the extreme tactical error he's just made. "I mean- I want to be here with Patrick now- and okay, fine, I'll talk it over with him. But no promises. I'm just going to talk to him."

"Oooh, yay, David! I know the little buttonface will say yes."

Alexis's squeal is loud and sharp and apparently loud enough to carry to the porch door behind David's seat at the kitchen table, from which, despite David's immediate ending of the Zoom call, David can hear Patrick's voice calling out, "what will the buttonface say yes to?" And David just puts his head in his hands and groans.

**

"Well, now you know what Alexis calls you behind your back," David says weakly as he and Patrick sit opposite each other at the table a few minutes later, Patrick cooling off with a glass of lemonade after a day of picking up vendor orders.

"I mean, she calls me that to my face too, so I guess it's kind of nice to know she's consistent," Patrick laughs. He takes another gulp of lemonade. "But yeah, we have to do it."

"Do we though?" David knows he's being whiny, but honestly this feels sort of warranted. "Doesn't going to the motel make more sense, anyway, if she has to isolate for fear of spreading a deadly virus?"

Patrick shrugs, fiddling with his napkin. "Maybe. But she doesn't seem to want to do that, and we are able to host her. We're all healthy and low-risk, she's been isolated for three weeks, apparently, and as long as she rents a car to drive up here alone then her isolating is more of a legal thing than a necessity in terms of worrying about her being sick."

"Yeah, but she could stay somewhere actually isolated and then we have our privacy and that's something that's grown very important to me since we've moved here..." David tries to give Patrick a sultry enough look to get his point across, and Patrick's face flushes pink, but the look in his eyes stays the same. David loses the look and sighs. "Dammit, we're doing this, aren't we."

"Yes, I think we are." Patrick is smiling at him, like he's proud of him, and it should rankle that his own husband is proud of him for something as basic as being nice to his sister during a global pandemic, but he knows Patrick gets it, that's it's not that he doesn't want to, it's that he has to kind of take his time to get there.

"I still don't get why she wants to come here," David grumbles. "But if she does come, then she is absolutely taking mail-order package wrapping shifts for the store."

"Sounds good, David." Patrick gets up, puts his lemonade glass in the sink, and stretches exaggeratedly, a line of skin becoming visible between his t shirt and jeans. As David watches, Patrick leans closer and whispers, "so if Alexis comes tomorrow... then we should probably get in some last minute privacy, don't you think?"

David can feel his smile growing as Patrick stands over him, his skin turning that same shade of pink as earlier. "Mhm, yeah, as much privacy as we can before she comes, I think." As he gets up to follow Patrick upstairs he thinks,  _ God, he just gets me _ .

**

Alexis rolls into their driveway late the next afternoon in a rented car that Patrick insists on immediately returning to the nearest rental company office ("you're going to be in  _ quarantine,  _ Alexis"), wearing her highest heels, a very short dress, and a mask in a suspiciously matching fabric ("hems are getting shorter, David, why shouldn't I just cut a teensy bit off?" "And why didn't they just draw eyebrows on the Mona Lisa, Alexis! You can’t just do that to high end fashion! Besides, I had no idea that your hems  _ could  _ get any shorter"). She immediately further rolls into her designated guest room, where they've agreed that she'll spend a couple of days in isolation just until they're sure she doesn't have any symptoms. David isn’t sure which he dreads more- the next couple of days when he and Patrick are going to have to wait on Alexis hand and foot, or the days after when she’s going to be roaming free in his house with nothing to do but bother him. 

Patrick shows Alexis around her room- the minifridge stocked with water and yogurt, the big bottle of hand sanitizer, the treadmill, the coffee maker (which they’d quietly repurposed after finally getting that espresso machine)- and is about to show her the bathroom (which will be hers only for those first few days- David and Patrick will use their ensuite- so she doesn’t have to constantly wipe it down) when Alexis perks up and says, “wait, I brought you something!” She runs back to her suitcase, opens it, burrows inside, and takes out a crumpled-looking bodega shopping bag. 

She carries it over to where Patrick is standing and holds it open proudly. David can’t tell from his spot on the stairs what’s inside, but he can hear Patrick say, in a tone that sounds carefully schooled, “thank you so much, Alexis, that’s so thoughtful. This will really come in handy!”

“I know, right?! I managed to snag the last package at Duane Reade by playing poker with the manager for it, and I figured when I was leaving that I’d give the rest to you!”

Once Alexis is safely tucked away in her room, Patrick carries the bag over to the storage closet, David following behind in curiosity; he pulls out two limp rolls of toilet paper. 

“Well, that’s thoughtful,” David says in a strangled voice as Patrick, smirking, sets the rolls on top of the three massive family packs of extra soft quilted toilet paper that David had elbowed several middle-aged women to get his hands on in that grocery store in Elmdale. “We’re putting those in her bathroom, though.” 

**

The next three days can only be called- quiet, a lot quieter than any days containing a caged-up Alexis should logically have been. David has been expecting that Alexis would be bugging him constantly, asking for food and lip balms and foot scrubs, but instead he doesn’t usually hear from her til lunchtime most days, and from then not til dinner. When he walks by her room- and why shouldn’t he walk by her room, it’s his house, and she might be sick so he should listen in to make sure she seems alright- he mostly hears either the sound of the treadmill running or, more frequently, the sound of Alexis’s voice, talking animatedly. 

So that works out better than he’s been expecting. 

He’s fully prepared for a deluge of over-caffeinated, newly-uncaged Alexis once she’s released from her room, to trip over her shoes on the floor, to pick up her smelly gym clothes from the floor, to see her criticizing his decor choices, making fun of him for being mushy with Patrick or a domestic house-husband or something, and of course asking for lip balms and foot scrubs, but- 

But he barely sees more of Alexis than he had for those first few days. By the end of the week, he thinks he’s spoken to her maybe once a day, at most. She’s mostly just the rustle of kitchen cabinets and the hiss of the shower spray and, as always, the chatter of her voice on the other side of her bedroom door. It’s frankly eerie.

Five days in, as Alexis yammers away in the guest room, Patrick is ladling out onion soup for dinner and topping it with cheese, carefully making an extra bowl for Alexis and leaving it in the fridge covered with plastic wrap. He carries the bowls over to the kitchen table, where David is putting down silverware, and they sit down in a movement that feels almost synchronized. The first few spoonfuls are mostly David enjoying the moment: him, his husband, delicious sweet and spicy and cheesy goodness, and…

“Okay, this is creepy, right?” 

Patrick quirks his head up at David, spoon halfway to his mouth. “What’s creepy?” 

David’s not actually sure himself, but- “I thought we weren’t going to have any privacy!”

Patrick narrows his eyes at David. “Are you actually upset that we’ve had privacy? I personally had thought you were enjoying it.” He wiggles his eyebrows and David snorts. 

“No, I know, it’s good! No complaints! But, like, why did Alexis even come here if she was going to just stay in her room all day? She could have just stayed in Brooklyn or gone to the motel, and instead she makes us turn our lives upside down…”

“By hiding out in her room and not bothering us at all?” 

Patrick’s eyes are a little bit too understanding now and it’s irritating. “Yes, it’s like we’re just a free version of the motel with better plumbing!”

“Your father co-owns the motel, so I see it as unlikely that Alexis would be charged for staying there, though I take your point about the plumbing.”

“Fine. But it’s like we live in two different houses or something. It’s like she’s avoiding us.” 

“I feel like that used to be something that you were happy about, back in the day…”

David knows he’s being gently wound up here- even if it weren’t from the actual words, it would be obvious from the smirk on Patrick’s mouth and the gentleness in his eyes. He puts his head in his hands. “Fine. You got me. I miss her, okay? I want to talk to her and she’s ignoring me and it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating because before she came I thought she was going to be around  _ all the time _ and I was so annoyed by that but also apparently I wanted that? Or maybe just some happy medium? I don’t even know.”

“That makes sense.” Patrick reaches across the table and squeezes David’s hand where it rests holding his spoon. “You know what? Tomorrow is Saturday, it’s the weekend, she probably won’t be working as much; let’s have a family dinner, something she really likes, and we can all hang out. By the end of it, you’ll probably be begging her to go back to her room.”

David snorts. “Yeah, probably. That said, most food that she really likes has a lot more lettuce than I feel comfortable with, so maybe we should pick the menu."

**

At dinner the next day, over falafel (vegetable-y enough to tempt Alexis downstairs, deep-fried enough for David), Alexis is basically just about as animated as David had expected her to be from the beginning of the trip, and David can see Patrick’s point: he’s going to be begging her to hide herself away somewhere by the end of this dinner so that he doesn’t have to hear more about that time that she mixed up Megan M, Megan J and Meaghan in a reply all disaster, and her flirtation with this hot guy at her gym- “not a forever kind of guy, though, so we’ll see.” 

She’s pouring more tahini in her pita as she says, “Guys, you have such a sweet little country place! It’s so cute and quiet when I wake up in the morning, with all the little birds flying around, not like all the noise in the city. It’s good not to wake up to all the sirens anymore.” 

She crunches into her pita and- David had been about to give some kind of snarky rebuttal, because she for sure was going to make some comment about how she misses the hustle and bustle, but- 

“Yeah, good, that’s good. Schitt’s Creek isn’t good at that many things but it is  _ definitely  _ great at being quiet.” 

David doesn’t really know what to say now, and Alexis is still chewing on her falafel, so Patrick says, brightly, “well, we’re definitely glad that you came, Alexis.” 

Alexis swallows and says, "well, I mean, everyone was going home! All of the other people in my department are, like, twenty five, and from those flyovery states, like Colorado, and Minneapolis-"

"Minnesota- Minneapolis is a city in Minnesota," Patrick interjects as though someone has pulled a string on his back, and flushes. 

Alexis pats him on the hand. "It's so sweet you know that, thank you. Anyway, they're all from the boonies and have their cute little parents and their cute little houses with their childhood bedrooms with their old  _ High School Musical  _ posters , so they all just went back there once New York started shutting down. And all my bosses have summer homes in the Hamptons or upstate or wherever and they went there, and we were doing a conference call one day and someone heard one of the sirens in the background and was all, 'aww, Alexis, why haven't you gone home?'"

David can't look at her, all of a sudden- his eyes are tracing the grain on the kitchen table, swirling up and down. Patrick's hand touches his back, starts rubbing it up and down, and that grounds him, gives him the ability to look up at where Alexis is still talking. 

"So anyway, I was all, 'oh, yeah, I'm about to, actually!' And so I called you," Alexis says matter of factly, so much so that David can only kind of take it. The firm, warm pressure of Patrick's hand on David's back gets stronger. "I was going to tell Mom and Dad to come here too, but apparently they're all hunkered down in their cute little beach house, and they're at risk so they shouldn't travel, so I just came home." 

“Well-” and David is  _ choking up _ , just a bit, he doesn’t think he’s done that since the day after his  _ wedding _ , when Mom and Dad left, he’d hidden it when Alexis and Stevie left- “well I’m glad you came home, Alexis.” 

“We both are,” Patrick says, his arm wrapping around David’s waist. 

“Mmmm, of course!” Alexis smiles small and sweet, the way that she does sometimes when she’s out of her depth, and then her eyes brighten. “Well of course you guys should be happy to have me back, because David, just because nobody sees you every day doesn’t mean you should be letting yourself go and someone has to get in control of this situation- I mean, your cuticles-”

“Um, excuse me, I wasn’t going to say anything about it, but your  _ roots _ -” 

“I am trying to  _ rejuvenate my scalp _ , David-” 

And David volleys back about Alexis’s truly vomitous nail-polish choices, and Patrick’s arm is wrapped around him, and everything is suddenly exactly how he wants it. He gives this conversation about twenty minutes before he tells her to poke her eye out with a rusty fish hook and leave him alone, and he smiles. 


End file.
